Medina del Campo

“ To conclude these few remarks on this work, I must observe, that it not only surpasses Cortes' despatches in completeness, but also in truth and naïveté. He represents the whole to you with a simplicity truly sublime; at times he astonishes with a power of expressing his sentiments peculiar to himself, and with a pathos that goes to the very heart.
Bernal Diaz was of a respectable family, and born in Medina del Campo, a small town in the province of Leon. ”

“ To all and singular who shall see, read, or hear the present letters, or the present public transumpt, we the reverend lord, Don Diego Hernandez, treasurer of the collegiate church of Saint Antolin of Medina del Campo, and official provisor and vicar general in temporalities and spiritualities of the reverend father and lord in Christ, Don Bernardo Gutterez, apostolic protonotary and abbot of the said town of Medina, health in the Lord, and let certain credence be given to these presents. ”

“ It was escorted by a numerous cortège of cavaliers and ecclesiastics, among whom was the faithful Martyr. The procession began its mournful march the day following her death, taking the route through Arevalo, Toledo, and Jaen. Scarcely had it left Medina del Campo, when a tremendous tempest set in, which continued with little interruption during the whole journey. The roads were rendered nearly impassable; the bridges swept away, the small streams swollen to the size of the Tagus, and the level country buried under a deluge of water. Neither sun nor stars were seen during their whole progress. ”

“ José Medina was king in this region. The party arrived in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth day of the month, all of the colour of saffron from the dust-clouds the car had raised, and Hillyard so stiff and bruised with the intolerable jolting over ruts baked to iron, that he could hardly climb down on to the ground. He slept that night amidst such a music of birds as he had never believed possible one country could produce. Through the night of the twenty-sixth he and José Medina watched; their lanterns ready to their hands. ”

“ In the immediate foreground lay El Medina itself, with its narrow streets, its busy bazars, its fair-skinned people, and its low, yellow, flat-roofed houses, each with its well and court-yard, nestling cozily among the feathery-fronded date-trees.
From the Eastern Road, a caravan from the Nejd was descending slowly into the town, and so clear was the atmosphere that Amzi could distinguish the huge, white dromedaries, and catch an occasional glint of a green shugduf, or the gorgeous litter of a grandee, trapped in scarlet and gold. ”

“ Thus situated, Medina was originally a city of agriculturists, not like Mecca a city of merchants; nor, apart from the indispensable trade in provisions, has it ever acquired commercial importance like that which Mecca owes to the pilgrimage. [2] Landowners and cultivators are still a chief element in the population of the city and suburbs. The latter, who are called Nakhāwila, and more or less openly profess the Shī‛a opinions, marry only among themselves. The townsmen proper, on the other hand, are a very motley race. [3] New settlers remain behind with each pilgrimage ”

“ For endurance and activity there is no one like José Medina between the sea and the Pyrenees. You think him safe in Mallorca and look! He lands one morning from the steamer, jumps into a motor-car, and in five minutes—whish!—he is gone like the smoke of my cigarette. He will drive his car through our mountains by tracks, of which the guardia civil does not even know the existence. ”

“ I have friends too in every town, Englishmen who love both England and Spain, Spaniards who love both Spain and England. We will put, if you permit, your agents in touch with my friends."
"Yes," said José Medina innocently. "How shall we do that? We must have lists prepared."
Hillyard smiled gently.
"That is not necessary, señor. We know your agents already. If you will secretly inform them that those who speak in my name," and he took his card from the table, and gave it into Medina's hands, "are men to be trusted, it will be enough." ”

“ While he was explaining this, in rather an apologetic tone, Medina was called away. There followed a summons to Walker to attend upon the Governor-General, and I found myself left quite alone in the midst of the gaping, muttering rabble. This was no throng of simple, hospitable rustics such as I had met and liked in the North Province; but a stable and kitchen mob, the low scullions and hostlers and lackeys of a great man, puffed with reflected pride and saucy with second-hand arrogance. ”

“ So much Martin Hillyard already knew; he learnt now that José Medina had provided the great opportunity. To snatch him with his two hundred motor feluccas and his eighteen thousand men from the English—here was something really worth doing.
"What beats me," said Hillyard, "is why they didn't try to get at you before."
"They didn't," said Medina.
Rosa, it seemed, used the argument which is generally sound; that the old and simple tricks are the tricks which win. She discovered the hotel at which José Medina stayed in Madrid, and having discovered it she went to stay there herself. ”

“ The southern part of the province is more favoured by nature. Medina is a city of 25,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, situated in a broad plain between the coast range and the low hills across which lies the road to Nejd. Its altitude above the sea is about 2500 ft. It is well supplied with water and is surrounded by gardens and plantations; barley and wheat are grown, but the staple produce, as in all the cultivated districts of Hejaz, is dates, of which 100 different sorts are said to grow. Yambu’ has a certain importance as the port for Medina. ”

“ Dogs barking close at hand warned us our ride was almost over, and as we galloped up a rise Eustaquio Medina pulled up and turned to us.
“There is the house,” he said, “just at the bottom of the hollow, only five squares away,” and as we saw the flicker of the lights, he struck his palm upon his mouth after the Indian fashion, and raised a piercing cry. Easing his hand, he drove his spurs into his horse, who started with a bound into full speed, and as he galloped down the hill we followed him, all yelling furiously. ”

“ Medina's faction preached it openly.
KING
Be cursed he and his faction. Oh how I labour
For these preventions! But so cross is fate
My ills are ne'r hid from me, but their cures.
What's to be done?
QUEEN
That which being left undone,
Your life lies at the stake. Let them be breathless
Both brat and mother.
KING
Ha!
MALATESTE
She plays true music Sir.
The mischiefs you are drenched in are so full,
You need not fear to add to them. Since now
No way is left to guard thy rest secure,
But by a means like this.
LOPEZ
All Spain rings forth
Medina's name, and his confederates. ”

“ We stayed here to water and repose the camels till the afternoon of the second day after our arrival, when we recommenced our march for the river, whose distance we were told was three days march from El Medina. During our stay at El Medina, Khalil Aga my companion was taken very ill with vomiting and purging, occasioned by having drank of the water of Morat, against which I had remonstrated without effect. ”

“ Success here might be so great a thing, so great a saving of lives, so dire a blow to the enemy. Somehow that day slowly dragged its burning hours to sunset, the coolness of the evening came, and the swift darkness upon its heels, and once more, high up on the hillside, the vigil was renewed. And at half-past one in the morning, far away at sea, a green light, bright as an emerald, flashed thrice and was gone.
"Did I not say to you, 'Have courage'?" said José Medina.
"Quick! the Lanterns!" replied Hillyard. "The red first! Good! Now the white. So! And the red again. Now we must wait!" ”

“ You were certainly there," returned José Medina, and he was no longer speaking either with doubt or with the exaggerated politeness of a Spaniard towards a stranger. He was not even speaking as caballero to caballero the relationship to which, in the beginning, Hillyard had most wisely invited him. He was speaking as associate to associate, as friendly man to friendly man. "On that night you were certainly with me! No, let me think! There were five men, yes, five and a boy from Valencia—Martin."
He pronounced the word in the Spanish way as Marteen. ”

“ Two tiny fishing villages cluster a mile or two apart at the water's edge, and high up on the cape's flanks here and there a small rude settlement clings to the hillside. There are no roads to the cape. From the east you may ride a horse towards it, and lose your way. From the west you must approach by boat. So remote and unvisited is this region that the women in these high villages, their homes cut out of the actual brown rock, still cover their faces with the Moorish veil.
There are no roads, but José Medina was never deterred by the lack of roads. ”

“ It is not thus that delicate questions are approached in Spain. Even the blackmailer does not dream of bluntly demanding money, or exposing his knowledge that he will get it. He pleads decently the poverty of his family and the long illness of his mother-in-law; and with the same decency the blackmailed yields to compassion and opens his purse. There is a gentlemanly reticence to be observed in these matters and Hillyard was well aware of the rules. He struck quite a different note.
"I shall speak frankly to you, Señor Medina, as one caballero to another"; and José Medina bowed and smiled. ”

“ She has great influence. She knows people in Berlin—great people. She is their friend, and I cannot wonder. What an intelligence!"
Martin Hillyard laughed.
"She seems to have fairly put it over you at any rate," he said. He was not alarmed at José Medina's fervour. For he knew that remarkable man's capacity for holding his tongue even in the wildest moments of his temporary passions. ”

“ José Medina neither assumed an ignorance of the German leanings of the port officials nor expressed any assent. But, as if he had realised the thought which must be passing in Hillyard's mind, he said:
"You know very well, señor, that I should be mad if I gave help to the Germans. I am in your hands. You and France have but to speak the word, and every felucca of mine is off the seas. But what then! There are eighteen thousand men at once without food or work thrown adrift upon the coast of Spain. Will not Germany find use for those eighteen thousand men?" ”

“ If our luck holds—and why should it not?—no one need ever know that the Señor Marteen and his friend José Medina picnicked for three days upon that cape."
"But the lighthouse-keepers! What of them?" objected Hillyard. In him, too, hope and excitement were leaping high. But this objection he offered up on the altars of the gods who chastise men for the insolence of triumph.
"What of them?" José Medina repeated gaily. "They, too, are my friends this many a year." He seated himself at the wheel of the car. "Come, for we cannot drive fast amongst these hills in the dark." ”

“ Navagiero, who visited Medina some six years later, when it was rebuilt, bears unequivocal testimony to its commercial importance. "Medina è buona terra, e piena di buone case, abondante assai se non che le tante ferie che se vi fanno ogn' anno, e il concorso grande che vi è di tutta Spagna, fanno pur che il tutto si paga più di quel che si faria.... ”

“ To us, as living beings, it is far more important that we bought our first oily, almondy Spanish cakes here than that Santa [Pg 34] Teresa (who started off at the age of ten years to be martyred by the Moors) founded a convent in the town.
Medina is a dead place and must be typical of Spain. It has a market, a plaza and a few ragged fringes of streets more than half full of collapsing houses, and in this gay-looking remnant of past glory are at least three enormous churches with monasteries in attendance. ”

“ Medina continues:]
Our father Baraona, as he loved the province of Bisayas so dearly, went through it, abandoning some houses and occupying others, and exchanging and returning still others. And, in fact, although he did it for the best, experience has proved that it has been bad for us. He exchanged Aclán for Barbarán; and although the latter is on the river Panay, it is a [105] convent needy of all things, and has the most perverse people, whom even yet we have been unable to subdue. ”

“ Others, when their weapons broke, sprang at their enemies with their naked hands and tore out their throats as hounds tear out the throat of a deer. Such was the battle of the Medina, fought on August 18, 1813. Of the eight hundred and fifty Americans who went into action only ninety-three came out alive. If the battle itself was a bloody one, its aftermath was even more so, the Spanish cavalry pursuing and butchering without mercy all the fugitives they could overtake. ”

“ At that time the Prophet was in Mecca, and he said to the Muslims, "In a dream I have been shown your migration place, a land of date palm trees, between two mountains, the two stony tracts." So, some people migrated to Medina, and most of those people who had previously migrated to the land of Ethiopia, returned to Medina. Abu Bakr also prepared to leave for Medina, but Allah's Apostle said to him, "Wait for a while, because I hope that I will be allowed to migrate also." ”

“ Done in the best style of Sir John de Medina, a famous foreign artist, who in those days resided in Edinburgh, and who now sleeps there in a quiet corner of the old Greyfriars Kirk-yard, a miniature of Lucy in a gold locket, with a braid of her black hair, was White's best solace; and for many an hour he lay in his swinging hammock, apart from all, gazing upon the soft features Medina's hand had traced. This miniature cost our poor subaltern half-a-year's pay ”